Related papers: The Exact Query Complexity of Yes-No Permutation M…
Mastermind game is a two players zero sum game of imperfect information. The first player, called codemaker, chooses a secret code and the second player, called codebreaker, tries to break the secret code by making as few guesses as…
In the past three decades, deductive games have become interesting from the algorithmic point of view. Deductive games are two players zero sum games of imperfect information. The first player, called "codemaker", chooses a secret code and…
We study variants of Mastermind, a popular board game in which the objective is sequence reconstruction. In this two-player game, the so-called \textit{codemaker} constructs a hidden sequence $H = (h_1, h_2, \ldots, h_n)$ of colors selected…
We study the query complexity of a permutation-based variant of the guessing game Mastermind. In this variant, the secret is a pair $(z,\pi)$ which consists of a binary string $z \in \{0,1\}^n$ and a permutation $\pi$ of $[n]$. The secret…
Since the 1960s Mastermind has been studied for the combinatorial and information theoretical interest the game has to offer. Many results have been discovered starting with Erd\H{o}s and R\'enyi determining the optimal number of queries…
From the 1970s up to now, Mastermind, a classic two-player game, has attracted plenty of attention, not only from the public as a popular game, but also from the academic community as a scientific issue. Mastermind with n positions and k…
Permutation Mastermind is a version of the classical mastermind game in which the number of positions $n$ is equal to the number of colors $k$, and repetition of colors is not allowed, neither in the codeword nor in the queries. In this…
We analyze the general version of the classic guessing game Mastermind with $n$ positions and $k$ colors. Since the case $k \le n^{1-\varepsilon}$, $\varepsilon>0$ a constant, is well understood, we concentrate on larger numbers of colors.…
Mastermind is a popular board game released in 1971, where a codemaker chooses a secret pattern of colored pegs, and a codebreaker has to guess it in several trials. After each attempt, the codebreaker gets a response from the codemaker…
A query game is a pair of a set $Q$ of queries and a set $\mathcal{F}$ of functions, or codewords $f:Q\rightarrow \mathbb{Z}.$ We think of this as a two-player game. One player, Codemaker, picks a hidden codeword $f\in \mathcal{F}$. The…
We close the gap in the proof (published by Chen and Lin) of formulas for the minimum number of questions required in the expected case for Mastermind and its variant called AB game, where both games are played with two pegs and $n$ colors.…
We analyze the classic board game of Mastermind with $n$ holes and a constant number of colors. A result of Chv\'atal (Combinatorica 3 (1983), 325-329) states that the codebreaker can find the secret code with $\Theta(n / \log n)$…
The AB game is a two-player game, where the codemaker has to choose a secret code and the codebreaker has to guess it in as few questions as possible. It is a variant of the famous Mastermind game, with the only difference that all pegs in…
In the permutation Mastermind game, the goal is to uncover a secret permutation $\sigma^\star \colon [n] \to [n]$ by making a series of guesses $\pi_1, \ldots, \pi_T$ which must also be permutations of $[n]$, and receiving as feedback after…
In this paper, we study the algorithmic complexity of the Mastermind game, where results are single-color black pegs. This differs from the usual dual-color version of the game, but better corresponds to applications in genetics. We show…
In the Generalized Mastermind problem, there is an unknown subset $H$ of the hypercube $\{0,1\}^d$ containing $n$ points. The goal is to learn $H$ by making a few queries to an oracle, which, given a point $q$ in $\{0,1\}^d$, returns the…
We introduce an extension of Mastermind called Clear Mastermind with enhanced feedback inspired by that from Wordle. The only difference between Clear Mastermind and Mastermind is a rule that provides more precise feedback, as found in…
The AB~Game is a game similar to the popular game Mastermind. We study a version of this game called Static Black-Peg AB~Game. It is played by two players, the codemaker and the codebreaker. The codemaker creates a so-called secret by…
Consider a variant of the Mastermind game in which queries are $\ell_p$ distances, rather than the usual Hamming distance. That is, a codemaker chooses a hidden vector $\mathbf{y}\in\{-k,-k+1,\dots,k-1,k\}^n$ and answers to queries of the…
I consider the natural infinitary variations of the games Wordle and Mastermind, as well as their game-theoretic variations Absurdle and Madstermind, considering these games with infinitely long words and infinite color sequences and…